Welcome the new Captain America!

<SPOILERS AHEAD!> 

Captain
America is back — and this time he’s brandishing a firearm.

The famous red-white-and-blue patriot was killed in “Captain
America” No. 25 last March.  In Wednesday’s issue, “Captain America” No. 34, Captain
America’s former teen sidekick, Bucky, now carries the star-spangled shield.

Bucky, who spent decades under hypnosis as a Soviet agent, carries a firearm as well as the shield.

“It’s a little jarring for some people to see that,” said the book’s writer, Ed Brubaker, in an interview with the New York Daily News. “[But] people forget that Captain America carried a gun a lot in World War II. Every three covers there was a shot of Captain
America with a machine gun or a flamethrower – or an atom bomb.”

Jim Lane, owner of Dragonfyre Comics, 1501 N Meridian, said he’d heard some customers complain about the new Captain
America carrying a gun in preview images released by Marvel, but he thinks it works with the character. “He doesn’t have the power that (original Captain
America) Steve Rogers had, so he’s had to pick himself up an equalizer,” Lane said.

Brubaker told Vaneta Rogers at Newsarama.com that Bucky’s ongoing redemption dovetailed nicely with the death of Captain
America, even if it wasn’t planned in advance.

“I had no clue until I wrote issue No. 26 or No. 27 that Bucky was actually going to end up taking the mantle,” Brubaker said. “It didn’t occur to me that it was the next evolution of where Bucky was going. I knew all along that we would also have a redemption of Bucky storyline. So once I realized how big this story was getting, I realized I needed someone back in the costume with the shield eventually. And Bucky fit so perfectly into that. It all came together.”